


Damned Thrice Over

by Tridraconeus



Series: The Vineyard of the Damned [4]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Gen, Introspection, Murder, Pre-Canon, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 15:59:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17583956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/pseuds/Tridraconeus
Summary: There were ten on each side, ten bunk beds overall. Rulfio started at the bottom, of course. He knew how to cut a hound's throat so it couldn't howl, so it would choke on its own blood if it didn't die immediately; the breathless gurgling noise was made by both children and hounds as they suffocated. It might have been easier to classify them as hounds; but no. They were children. But it was kinder.





	Damned Thrice Over

**Author's Note:**

> various wips i have for dh fic: lighter companion to take my hand, shifting sands, au where galia gets the mark and starts the whalers instead of daud, precanon jeanette lee/delilah, overseer/whaler pwp. all of these are in some level of WIP. one of them is mostly finished. i don't know what else will happen.  
> More seriously, this fic is over a year old. I started writing it in bits and pieces while I was writing VotD and wanted to explore some of Rulfio's character before I introduced him, and I love the idea of there being a former Overseer close to Daud's age in the Whalers as a kind of foil to him-- Dad v2, perhaps. I hesitate to call this complete, but I also know I won't actually ever complete it if I allow myself.  
> hey this also has [a companion playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMWVnHOeztACaFqEsXQgPyVrYNNOpzvbY)

**_10th day of the Month of Rain, 1825_ **

 

Rulfio had proctored the Trials of Aptitude for long enough that he could tell the ones that would make it and the ones that wouldn't by a glance. When he was younger, he wondered why they would choose the weak ones, if they were just going to die; now that he was older, he bitterly knew it was so the others would see the death. It was like whelping hounds. The Trials culled the weak ones from the pack, and hardened the others from the experience. Most of the children cried. Rulfio hadn't cried since his Trials. He was around twenty eight, now-- hadn't put much thought into it, as over-celebration of birthdays was seen as a channel for the Outsider's wiles-- and he hadn't cried since he was a boy. He'd been young when he became an Overseer, but he didn't consider that _boyhood_ , not really.

The bunkhouse housing the children awaiting the Trials was silent, as if every piece of the foundation were holding its breath. What he was doing was kinder than letting them die slowly, picked apart one by one until only the strongest, most resilient, most heartless were left, he told himself. It echoed in the back of his mind like a prayer, his own private stricture. Kindness. _Kindness_. It was a kindness, to not let them be hollowed out and filled back up with hate. Hate, and the Strictures. His saber stayed loosely by his side until he passed the threshold, feet falling catlike on the concrete floor. Then he brought it up higher, to a striking position. He felt as it if should make a noise against the air. The hawing hiss of cutting paper perhaps, or the scrape of a coin pushed into a slot. Nobody woke; he saw, by lamplight, the silvery tracks of dried tears on some of their faces, these children who had marched for miles to never see their families again, some to never see their home city. 

Yes. This was kinder. 

 _Let my hands not be restless_ , he thought, and got to the bloody work of slitting each of their little throats.

Then, he ran.

*

He reached Dunwall within three days, still in Overseer's cloth with the blood on the hems. He couldn't help but feel dirty all the way through. Mud caked his boots; he felt as if it went much deeper than that. He hadn't spoken or eaten at all in that time, and he felt like he'd vomit if he opened his mouth.  He considered killing himself. He considered going back and turning himself in to his brothers, though he assumed he was already cast out. He considered laying down and waiting for death. 

In the end, he did none of that and instead wandered the streets at night. Hid under bridges during the day. It was a sad existence, but for some reason he didn't think to try and blend in. He wore the mask, still, to protect from the acrid tang of the air. The beady eyes of small, skittish rats. 

*

“Don't run. Anything that runs is meant to be chased, and we are _much_ faster than you.” The lenses of the mask bounced back light in bottle-green. Rulfio snarled and held his saber up; he'd long since ditched the mask. It couldn't help him. He didn't want it anymore.

“Stay away from me, heretic.” 

The masked man laughed, a huff of air distorted by the mask. He held his blade low and guarding, not necessarily poised to strike but still threatening in a way that curdled Rulfio's stomach. His gray coat moved with him with each step and made him look less corporeal than he was. “You knew what was coming when you came here.” 

Almost faster than Rulfio could process, he struck. But that _almost_ was a pitfall his opponent hadn't taken into consideration; Rulfio blocked, the swords impacting each other with a harsh _clang_. The assassin stepped forward, pressing his weight into the blade and forcing a lock. The blades scraped each other, the creak of pressure and screech of metal. They could have stayed there locking blades for a while, but Rulfio didn't like to draw things out. He stepped back and to the side; his opponent stumbled forward. His next blow pierced the man clean through the shoulder. He wailed, a terrible and howling sound in the quiet of the alley. It bounced up the walls and came back as a scream. Rulfio yanked the saber out and kicked him in the hip. He staggered back, dissolved into a swirl of ash and whispers of the Void, and again Rulfio ran. 

 _We_. There were more. Rulfio couldn't see any of them, but he was running, and so he was being chased. 

*

They were good. He was better, even without black magic on his side. He hid inside a distillery and considered himself lucky that the assassins lost him so easily.

Easily enough that he suspected either foul play or outside intervention, neither thought he wished to linger on for long.

Instead he thought about their technique, Serkonan in the structure though varied enough to evidence that they were taught in groups, left to figure out the finer details by themselves or with each other. That was a strike in his favor; with tighter tutelage, Rulfio had no doubts that he'd be dead. As it was, he'd escaped with the skin of his back and not too roughed up, either. 

*

The next encounter came in a terribly filthy alley, Rulfio sickened from bad food, bad water, bad air and the assassins rightfully shamed for losing track of him (in  their territory! _Fools_ , he thought, quietly. And then at himself, for staying there— _fool_.) for so long. 

He put up a good fight, all things considered, and though he didn't want to die he quietly made peace with a majority of things in the event of it.

When one got a hit in on him, the blade was so sharp that he didn't even feel it at first; only by looking down and seeing his shirt in tatters and blood seeping through the fabric did he realize. That, and a sudden, tearing pain as he twisted to deliver a cleaving overhand to the man fighting him. 

Taken down by a lucky shot. That was the worst part of this, really. His opponent fluttered into ash and Rulfio ran again, blessedly making it all the way to an abandoned apartment building he’d been holed up in for the time being without any more incidents. He took a second-story room, wrapped his injury as well as he could, and passed out onto the filthy mattress laid on the floor. Sleep-- if it could be called that-- was gratefully empty. 

He woke an hour or two later to screaming pain. Instead of indulging in it, he forced himself to examine the room. It was small; there was a window, open to an alley, which wasn't ideal but also provided a flow of dubiously fresh air that kept the room from smelling of blood and sweat. There was a sink. He wasn't sure if it worked or not. The mattress was filthy but not infested as far as he could tell, and there was-- blessedly-- a bandage tin and cleaning salts on the shelves above the sink. He was still panting when he stood and made his way over to the bandage tin. He tried the sink-- it coughed out a stuttering stream of water, which was far better than he expected. He pried open the bandage tin and found just enough to wrap his side in clean bandages. Nothing more; he was glad for the experience he had in going to sleep injured and in tending his own wounds. Nothing went to waste. Nothing _could_ be wasted.

When he finished, he tucked the tin back and shut off the sink. A hound bayed outside in the street, the sound settling in Rulfio's heart. He sharply missed Valor. The poor pup was probably worried sick. The bandage tin clicked shut and he set it back on the shelf. He took a step toward the door; his head spun, and so he made his way back to the mattress with a listing, unsteady step and sat down, accepting defeat for now. So far he'd been too exhausted to dream; he didn't want to fall asleep and see the neat lines of sleeping children. 

There were ten on each side, ten bunk beds overall. Rulfio started at the bottom, of course. He knew how to cut a hound's throat so it couldn't howl, so it would choke on its own blood if it didn't die immediately; the breathless gurgling noise was made by both children and hounds as they suffocated. It might have been easier to classify them as hounds; but no. They were children. But it was _kinder_.

Despite his best efforts, even reciting the Strictures with each word like a spike to his tongue, consciousness slipped away and he fell asleep. 

He dreamed of young men with holes in their shoulders and hounds with cut throats.

*

“Damn the Abbey, and damn their Trials, and damn their _Strictures_.” Rulfio bit out. He wasn't going to cry; hadn't cried since the Trials. But his throat closed up and his head felt stinging and tight, and somehow the sluggishly bleeding gash in his abdomen didn't bother him as much as it should. He was going to die, that he knew. Whether one of the masked men-- Whalers, he knew now-- found him and slit his throat or he bled out onto the dirty mattress, he was going to die. 

He mumbled through the Strictures, more for the motion than for the meaning. It calmed him down and he fell back to sleep through the pain. 

He dreamed of neat lines of children, standing still and at attention with red lines across their throats.

*

He should have seen it coming. The day after his fever wore off-- no longer half-dead and delirious, but now aching and still hopeless-- he wandered too far from the empty carcass of a building he'd taken refuge in. It would have been faster to smoke him out; easier to just wait until he inevitably tried to escape the stretch of deserted territory these Whalers called their own, and of which he was intruder in. 

The hound-like masks and butcher's swords descended on him, no longer one at a time but in groups of two or three; they attacked like hounds, too, darting in and softening him up, letting another take their place.

It was disorienting. He could handle it.

They started flickering into ashes and whispers of the Void.

That was a little harder to handle. A blade struck him, quite hard, on the back. An elbow followed it, and a sharp kick to the backs of his knees ensured that he went down with all the gracefulness of a drunk racehorse.

The masks loomed over him. One of the dark figures crouched over him and flipped him onto his back, then looked up to its fellows.

“Do you think Daud will be pleased?” 

It was impossible to tell gender from the way the mask muffled their voice. To make himself feel better about what he was going to do, he imagined the Whaler leaning over him was a man, young but not a child, sturdy enough to recover. His sword laid in his limp hand; not much longer. He flipped it up and jammed it into the abdomen of the poor, foolish assassin leaning over him. 

Rulfio was getting horribly accustomed to screams. He forced the awful noise from his head, scrambled to his feet and bolted, desperately hoping the diversion would allow him to flee back to relative safety. 

It didn't work. He was shot in the back by something, sharp and stinging, and within ten seconds his vision went fuzzy and strong arms caught him up, dragged him into the dark sky.

*

“Who are you?” Daud wondered aloud; then, as his gaze settled on Rulfio's shoulders like a lead blanket, Rulfio realized it was an actual question.

He thought of what he must look like; filthy, exhausted, _hunted_ , shadows under his eyes and the tattered cloth of an Overseer on his back. He met Daud's eyes steadily. He didn't know what he was supposed to feel toward the man anymore. Hate? Fear? He was as much of an outcast, now, if not more. He had blood on his hands, innocent blood, without even the excuse of doing it for coin. Who was he?

“I'm nobody,” is what he settled on. 

“Two weeks, and five of my men. That's what it took to catch you,” Daud replied; incredulous. “And you say that you're no one.” 

“If _they_ had caught me, I would be branded. I was not, but I can still feel it on my heart. I cast myself out. I had to. I'm _nobody_.” It sounded as much of a desperate plea-- _please don't look at me_ \-- as it did a shameful admission, and Rulfio's insides twisted in confusion and fear. 

“And what did you do to deserve it?”

Daud's voice was low. He already knew, or so Rulfio suspected. There was something terribly selfish in that; thinking his crime so obvious as to be broadcast to the world, or at least an assassin. He lowered his head.

“Twenty children. Ten on each side, I _killed_ them. I killed them to save them from the Trials, I killed them!” The ghosts of tears welled up in his eyes. He hadn't cried since the Trials-- wouldn't, now. He screwed his eyes shut and curled his hands into fists. 

Daud was quiet. Damningly so. Any second, Rulfio expected to feel a blade fall on his neck, and some part of him pathetically welcomed it. Instead, Daud spoke. 

“What would you say if I told you I could give you a second chance?”

Rulfio looked up, brows furrowed-- confused. Hopeful, despite himself. 

“A second chance?”

“A second chance,” Daud repeated, and then clarified-- “join me. Teach my men. I have room for a nobody in my ranks, so long as you follow orders.” 

“And if I say no?” He wouldn't. They both knew. But it had to be said, some sort of small rebellion against himself. 

“Then I'll be kind and slit your throat.” 

Rulfio said yes. Of course he did. 

Though his Bond could be counted among the strongest, he never liked using the powers much.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed!


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